As a mother of two girls, I have regularly followed articles and advice columns about “mean girls.” I avoided meanness like the plague as a child – not necessarily because I was more moral than other kids. In fact, my avoidance of meanness was more about self-preservation. I figured if I was never mean to others, then I reduced the risk of someone being mean to me.

Having stayed under the radar, I realize there is a world of “mean girls” that I totally missed. And I have been surprised at how early some of those tendencies arise in my daughter and her classmates. There is constant chatter about who is or is no longer one’s best friend. I am constantly hearing about hurt feelings, someone being mean, or, through inference, hearing when my own daughter seems to be the victim or perpetrator of meanness. Though I realize we are not even close to the tween and teen years, I see the hints of what is to come.

But last week, I was the chaperone for my daughter’s field trip. I wondered whether I would see any of that behavior in real time (not just through the stories relayed at bedtime or at the dinner table). My observations did not lead to any conclusions about my daughter’s experiences. But what I did see were a bunch of kids who were thrilled to have some attention and affection. I did not really do much. I deployed my typical distraction technique of asking lots of questions of the kids. And before I knew it, I never had an empty hand. Kids I had never met before wanted to hold my hand and be near me.

As we rode the bus back, my heart was full of sympathy for all the kids. Though I know they all hurt each other with insults and teasing, at the heart of matter, they are all children of God, who like all of us, long for love. What made me so grateful about the trip was these kids who sometimes say and do mean things are also kids trying to navigate social systems, kids trying to be tough, and kids who need love. And if all that is true about kids, how much more so about all of us adults? This week, I invite you to see those around you with the eyes of compassion – the same eyes with which God sees you.

In seminary one of my favorite professors was our theology professor. I did not like her because of the subject she taught. In fact, her class was one of the classes that gave me the most headaches as I struggled to understand theological arguments. Instead, what I liked about her was the way that she taught. She had a dizzying intellect, and yet she had the ability to gently make you feel like you were not an idiot. Someone in class would ask a question, trying to get their head around a theological concept. Her soft response would be, “Oh, yes, yes, I could see how you might get to that conclusion. So-and-so also argued that heresy in the fourth century.” Or she might answer, “Oh yes, that heresy is one of the church’s favorite,” and then go on to explain how the church struggled to counter the heresy. What I loved about her responses was she let you know that although you clearly did not understand the theological concept, you were not the first person to struggle to understand and you will not be the last. Struggling to understand and articulate a cogent theological concept without slipping into a heretical argument is a basic part of being a Christian.

What I loved about the pastoral nature of my professor’s responses was she understood that being able to articulate a definition of God is incredibly difficult. More important to her than you getting that articulation correct was your engagement with the concept. Perhaps she understood that theologians for centuries have tried to do the same thing – define who God is and what God means. That may be why she never seemed bothered by our heresies – because she knew that her role, and in fact the role of the church, is to be involved in the ongoing endeavor of naming God’s activity in our world.[i] That is the same work that we do every year on the feast of Trinity Sunday – embracing the endeavor of naming God’s activity in our world.

To help us in that endeavor, we get two great pieces of scripture today. In our gospel lesson from John, Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit will guide the disciples into all truth. Jesus’ promise to the disciples tells us those closest to Jesus, those who have been sitting at Jesus’ feet, learning truth from the source, are still going to need help. The disciples, who will be commissioned to go out into the world to share the Good News, will not do that work alone. The Spirit will go with them, helping them to continue to learn and grow into the fullness of faith.

I was recently invited to come to Sunday School for a little round of “stump the priest.” I laughed at the title, but inside I was thinking, “What if they ask a question that really does stump me?!?” Luckily, a cooler head prevailed. The truth is they probably will stump me – several times over. But that will give us a chance to talk about how the Spirit guides us into all truth – in childhood, in young adulthood, and into our older years. But more importantly, I hope that we get the chance to talk about how the community of faith is a vital part of that learning of all truth. We are certainly dependent on the Spirit, but we are also dependent on each other, because the Spirit so often speaks to us through people and the words of those around us.[ii]

That is one of the things I love most about being in the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has always been a place where ambiguity is okay. As David Lose explains, “…being part of being a Trinitarian community [means] striving to be a place that knows it doesn’t have all the answers, and so consequently makes space for conversation and values those who bring different voices and experiences into its midst. Conversation, valuing difference, being inclusive – these things aren’t easy, but genuine community, while challenging, is also creative, productive, and enriching.”[iii]

The other great piece of learning today comes from our reading in Romans. On the surface, this piece of scripture has always troubled me. Paul’s claim that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, has always sounded a little dismissive about suffering. But I do not think Paul meant for this formula of suffering leading to hope was not meant to be prescriptive, but descriptive.[iv] In other words, he is not saying those who are suffering should be grateful. What he is saying is those who are suffering have the opportunity to not waste the pain. Peter Steinke says, “We ‘waste’ suffering if we gloss over, deny, avoid, or neglect its message…. If, however, we can learn from pain, [pain] is not wasted but a source of life and health.”[v] My suspicion is that Paul is trying to capture what we learn from our gospel lesson today. Even in the midst of suffering the Holy Spirit and the community of faith can guide us into all truth.

I have been a part of parishes that have a communal component to their premarital counseling. In addition to meeting with the priest, each engaged couple is partnered with a married couple in the parish for mentoring. One would think that the married couple’s job is to tell the engaged couple how to do everything and give them advice. But more often, the couples end up talking about how hard marriage is, what struggles they have dealt with, and how they got through the suffering. The relationships between the mentors and the mentees often last well beyond the wedding. When done with honesty, vulnerability, and compassion, the couples realize that they gain strength from one another and find a place where they can go when they are looking for truth and guidance.

Our gospel and epistle lessons today weave together an understanding of the Trinity that is both vertical and horizontal.[vi] Vertically, we learn that our understanding of God is ever changing and dynamic – much like God is ever changing and dynamic. I think that is why my professor was so open to us stepping into and out of heresies and doctrine. She knew that every Christian had to take that journey of steps and missteps. But I think she also understood that truth was ever evolving and that the Spirit was with us in that journey. She was not worried about us because, “…a critical characteristic of faith is an ever-striving and dynamic making sense of God. The Trinity [cannot] be the only way to get God. [That theology] is as limited and finite as our humanity. [The theology of the Trinity] is one attempt of the church to articulate the being of God in a particular time and place.”[vii] We will continue to walk toward truth in our own time and place too.

Horizontally, our lessons teach us that we find our way to that truth the Spirit is showing us through the vehicle of those around us – both those in the church, and those outside our walls. I cannot count the number of times I have learned something profound about God by someone who never harkens the door a church. Our job is to pay attention: pay attention to the way that God is using others to show us more about God; pay attention to the ways God invites us to interpret our sufferings with others; pay attention to those who are struggling toward truth along with us. We will surely step into heresy now and then. But we will also step into God’s love and grace through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and those around us. Amen.

Last week we started our Meet and Greets at Hickory Neck. I knew that I wanted to get to know the people of the parish in a more meaningful way than just shaking hands in the receiving line after church. And so, we are gathering in small groups of 10-12 people, and taking time to tell our stories. The gatherings have already been a tremendous blessing. I am learning about the varied ways that people found their way to Hickory Neck, their loves and passions, and their hopes and dreams.

What I particularly enjoy about the gatherings is the reminder of how powerful our stories are. Each person in our community has a unique story, with elements that are quite familiar to us, and elements that are totally foreign to us. I think that fascination with stories is why I have been attracted to efforts like Humans of New York or StoryCorps. Those efforts are hoping to capture the everyday nature of our stories, while demonstrating the powerful ways that we connect through our stories. Our stories have the ability to bring others joy, to elicit empathy, to bring us to tears, and to open up new worlds.

Too often, we are tempted to ignore the depth of those stories with strangers. We are busy about our business, trying to accomplish tasks, or stick to a schedule. In that routine, we forget that there are people all around us who have rich stories and whose lives may have something to teach us. From that man who snapped at you in line, to the child who fell asleep in school, to the mom out in public in her pajamas, to the teen engrossed in social media, each person has a story behind their behavior – and the story may be much different than a quick glance allows us to assess.

If you have not joined a Meet and Greet, I encourage you to sign up at church. In fact, even last night someone commented about how much they were learning about people they had known for quite some time. But beyond our work within the community, I invite you to start looking at those outside of our community with a different eye: the eye of someone who sees the unique and sacred stories we all have. I look forward to hearing how your encounters go.

Though I often share with people that I grew up in the Methodist Church, what that story fails to capture is my earliest experiences in church. You see, before my father became a United Methodist minister, he, my mother, and I worshiped at a Pentecostal church. So my first memories of church are quite different from my current experiences in church. I remember the pastor putting his hand on a person’s forehead and the person crumbling to the ground, presumably slain in the spirit or healed of a malady. I remember sitting in the pew once with a friend of my parents’ when the woman leaned over to me and whispered, “I’ll be right back.” She then proceeded to run up and down the aisle, her hands waving in the air. I do not remember anyone speaking in tongues, but I would not be surprised if that happened.

I have always found the fact that Episcopalians like Pentecost so much fascinating because we are about as far from Pentecostal as any church could get. I have yet to find an Episcopal Church that encourages running up and down aisles, speaking in tongues, and being slain in the spirit. That does not mean we do not move. In fact, we stand, kneel, sit, cross ourselves, bow, and sometimes even genuflect. You might find a few of us lift our hands in praise, but most of us keep our hands tightly to our sides. You might find a few of us who will say an unprompted “Amen!” aloud, but they will likely get a few glares. We are likely to, rather proudly, wear red on Pentecost. But that is the extent of most Episcopalians “Pentecostalism.” We like things much more ordered, predictable, and civilized. In other words, if we are really being honest, Episcopalians are not all that big on Pentecost.

Our aversion to Pentecostal experiences are not all that unfounded. All one has to do is look at the first Pentecost that we read about in Acts today. The day the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven is a pretty disorderly, unpredictable, uncivilized day. Wind whips through people’s hair, fire bursts into flames on people’s heads, and a cacophony of noise ensues that both makes no sense at all, and yet makes perfect sense to each person there. Although that chaos may sound very similar to anyone with small children in the house, that chaos is not exactly what we have come to expect as civil Episcopalians.

But if we are to get our heads around Pentecost, we have to understand what was really happening on this feast of Pentecost. The feast of Pentecost was known to most Jews as the feast of Weeks, or Shavuot. Shavuot is the third of the three great festivals of Judaism. Shavuot was a joyful celebration, in which the first fruits of the harvest were offered to God.[i] But Shavuot was not simply an agricultural festival. Shavuot, or Pentecost, was fifty days after the Passover. At Passover, the Jews celebrated the saving of the Israelites from the death that came upon the firstborn of the Egyptians. Fifty days after that dramatic event, the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai to receive the law from Moses. And so, in addition to thanking God for the first fruits of the harvest, praying that the rest of the harvest might be equally bountiful, Pentecost was also “about God giving to [God’s] redeemed people the way of life by which they must now carry out [God’s] purposes.”[ii]

The parallels in and of themselves are uncanny. At the Passover, the people of God are saved as death passed over their homes. In Christ, the people of God are saved once again as Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. At Shavuot, the people of God are given the new way of life, specifically through the vehicle of Torah, or the Ten Commandments. At Pentecost this day, we are reminded of the New Commandment given through Jesus that we love the Lord our God and love our neighbors as ourselves.[iii]

So if this day is all about us being given the way of life that we must now live, what do we learn in this chaotic, uncivilized day? Most remarkably, we see people speaking in tongues they do not know, and yet, all understanding in their native tongues. That does not mean that all the languages suddenly became one – like making English the official language of Christianity. Instead, “Pentecost gives power to the band of Jesus followers to speak the languages of the world, to tell the gospel in every language. The early church [is] to bear witness to the ends of the earth in the languages of the people of the world.”[iv]

I have been thinking a lot about speaking other people’s languages this past week. Having just moved from Long Island to Williamsburg, I have been keenly aware of language differences over the last month. Of course, some of our differences in language are more about dialect than anything else – our vowels sound different, or r’s are sometimes dropped. But a more poignant difference in our language is around culture. On Long Island, communication is usually concise and incisive. That may sound rather appealing, but the first time someone tells you how they really feel about you, and the way that they feel is pretty negative, the language can feel like a slap in the face. Of course, that is not to say Southerners have the market on ideal communication. I remember many a time growing up when someone said, “Bless your heart,” and their words had nothing to do with a blessing.

As I have been ruminating on those differences this week, I wondered whether those differences go beyond region and perhaps are at the root of many of our challenges today. I have wondered if part of our country’s problem in communicating with one another is rooted in the fact that we are not speaking the same language. Of course, most of us can speak English in this country, but even though we speak the same language, we do not speak from the same cultural reality. There are experiences that I have as a woman that my male brothers will never fully understand. There are experiences that my African-American brothers and sisters experience that I will never fully understand. There are experiences that our young adults are having through technology that us older folks will never fully understand. In some ways, I wonder if in America, we have become more like the people of Babel than the people of Pentecost.

Luckily, we are not beyond God’s power to make our Babel-like ways right. There are all sorts of tangible ways we can work toward understanding others’ languages. We have a pretty incredible collection of young adults in this parish. Being a part of community means that we can reach out to our young people to hear their stories and trials – just as they can learn about our own stories and trials. Being a part of community means that we can join any number of the outreach ministries of Hickory Neck and learn quite quickly what language and cultural context poverty creates. Being a part of a community means that we can read authors whose cultural contexts are completely different from ours and learn more clearly why movements like “Black Lives Matter,” might have arisen in the first place.

That is the true invitation of Pentecost: to step boldly into the chaos of differing languages, knowing that the Holy Spirit will bring about true understanding. Of course, stepping into that cacophony is scary. As N.T. Wright says, stepping into the cacophony means getting “out there in the wind, letting it sweep through your life, your heart, your imagination, your powers of speech, and transform you from a listless or lifeless believer into someone whose heart is on fire with the love of God.”[v] That kind of transformation may not sound like what you were hoping by wearing red today. But that kind of transformation offers the promise not of calming the cacophony of language all around us, but helping us hear in the midst of the chaos. God, whose very existence in the form of the Trinity is three distinct persons, yet one, invites us to live as a community differentiated in persons, but untied in love.[vi] That Pentecostal community will be loud, messy, and hard. But that community will be life-giving, renewing, and beautiful. Our invitation today is to step into the wind of the Spirit. Amen.

As many of you know, I was raised in the South. My San Diego-native husband tells me that when he met me in high school, I had an endearing North Carolina accent. But after going to college with people from all over the country and living in Delaware, I found that my accent faded. I tended to pick up phrases and patterns of speech from those around me. Of course, one call from my Alabama-native mother, and all bets were off. But about four years ago, my family moved to Long Island with our then two-year-old. Surrounded by Long Islanders, she quickly started pronouncing vowels differently and dropping r’s. I am not sure how much of the dialect I assimilated, but my ears certainly adjusted.

What I came to finally understand about all these dialects is that much more important than the sound of words are the culturally different ways people communicate with one another in different regions of the country. My experience on Long Island was that people were very direct and incisive with their words. Being from the South, this was more of a shock than the dialect. In the South, people are indirect and subtle with their language. Though I was raised to interpret conversations in the South, if I am honest, I found the Long Island way of communicating refreshing. Although I sometimes felt like I was being slapped in the face by the brutal honesty of another person, when I went home, I knew where I stood. That was not always the case in the South. People are almost always polite, but hidden in the politeness are sometimes feeling of resentment or hurt, which cannot be addressed if you do not know how to hear the subtlety.

This Sunday, the Church is celebrating Pentecost. If you remember the story from Acts, those gathered begin speaking in tongues. The miracle was not in the speaking of tongues, but in the understanding of tongues by everyone gathered. Each heard their own language and the message was clearly understood by all. Having recently returned to the South, I find myself wondering in what ways the Church could be speaking more clearly. I am not suggesting that one region of the country has the market on clear speech. What I am suggesting is that as a Church, we are not always great at communicating the power of Christ in our lives. We either get lost in “church speak,” or we try to academically explain matters of the heart, or, out of fear or discomfort, we do not speak at all. As we honor the miracle of the work of the Holy Spirit over two thousand years ago, our invitation at Pentecost is to honor the ways in which the Holy Spirit can continue to enliven the church to speak understandably to a new generation.

Thousands of years ago, our people were enslaved. Once-friendly Egypt got a new pharaoh who saw the sheer number of us, and out of fear, enslaved us. We lost our freedom, and labored under a brutal new regime. We longed for better days. We longed for a return to our homeland, even though our homeland could not have sustained us because of the famine years before. Every night, our cries went out to God. One day, God heard us. God sent us a man by the name of Moses, who dramatically managed to convince Pharaoh to let us go back home. So we quickly packed our things and ran. Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his armies after us. But when we crossed the Sea of Reeds, and Pharaoh’s army drowned, we celebrated. We were free.

Not long after, the rejoicing stopped. Freedom did not look like what we thought freedom would look like. Freedom was hard. When we were enslaved, we always knew from where our next meal would come. We knew where we would lay our heads at night. We knew the routine. With Moses, we were constantly wandering in the wilderness, wondering where our next meal would come from, searching for water, unsure of what would happen. Nothing in our journey unfolded as we imagined. We thought freedom would mean being able to do whatever we wanted, being free of obligation, and not being constrained by anyone or thing other than ourselves. Pharaoh was admittedly awful, but better the devil you know, right?

Being from a country whose primary value is freedom, sometimes I think we get as confused as our ancestors about what freedom means in the context of being people of faith. Take our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles today. There are both people who are free and people who are not. Those who own the slave-girl are free to collect money for someone else’s performance, and they are free to get someone thrown in jail. The judges who throw Paul and Silas into jail are also free – free to choose who is punished and who is not. Finally, we might put the jailer into the free category as well. He is a man with a steady, respectable job, who has power over those in prison.

Meanwhile, our story has those who are lacking freedom. The first character we hear about is a slave-girl. In some ways, this nameless slave is a double slave – a slave to her owners who use her for money and a slave to the spirit of divination inside her. Paul and Silas also lose their freedom. They are thrown into jail midway through our story, which clearly puts them in the not-free category. Plus, the slave-girl calls them “slaves of the Most High God.”

Looking at the characters in Acts, we can see how confusing the definition of freedom can be. If freedom is a value in and of itself, then the heroes of our story are the slave owners, magistrates, and the jailer. The owners of the slave girl obviously have social capital and an income source. They have influence and power, and up until Paul and Silas come along, they have the comforts of wealth. The judges also have a great deal of respect and power in the community. They are charged with keeping order in the community and protecting the community’s way of life. Even the jailer has a clear sense of identity and purpose. He may not have wealth and prestige, but he has a secure job and a sense of clear identity in the community.

Consciously, we know that we should not identify with these three entities. But subconsciously, and in a country that does not distinguish between freedom and freedom in Christ, we find ourselves much more aligned with and, quite frankly, longing for the kind of freedom that these three parties have. Meanwhile, the slave-girl is nothing like what we hope for ourselves. Being possessed by a spirit and being owned by another individual do not usually make the top of our lists for happiness and fulfillment. And in no way do we want to be like Paul and Silas, who not only seem to be homeless rebel-rousers, they also are physically brutalized and imprisoned. We are faithful followers of Christ, but I doubt many of us would take that commitment all the way to jail.

Last week, a friend of mine had that very debate. She is a priest in North Carolina, and she decided to join the weekly protests that has become known as Moral Mondays. Moral Mondays have been happening since 2013, as religious leaders and followers across North Carolina have gathered in peaceful protest of the laws being passed that promote unfair treatment, discrimination, and oppression. Bishop Michael Curry was a frequent protestor and speaker at Moral Mondays before being elected Presiding Bishop. Last week, my friend decided that she needed to join fellow Christians in protest, but she was uncertain about the possibility of being arrested. She knew what was happening in the legislature was unjust, but she also had a family and job to think about. She was unsure about how she could best be of use – by staying long enough to be escorted to jail, or whether her presence at the protest would be enough.

What my friend was on the cusp of understanding is what Paul, Silas, and the slave-girl already know. The slave-girl already knows the truth that no one else can see – that Jesus is the way to salvation. And when she shouts that long and loudly enough, she is not only freed of her possession, she is free of the bondage of slavery – because her owners can no longer use her as they did before. Even Paul and Silas, who are locked in jail, are more free than they seem at first glance. What person, after being brutally whipped and thrown into a cold cell, can be found praying and singing praises to God in the middle of the night? Only someone who is so free of the bondage of this world can be able to praise God in the midst of earthly suffering.

If Paul, Silas, and the slave-girl are free, guess who the real enslaved ones in our story are. Those owners, who seem to have the earthly freedom of wealth, have actually become slaves to their wealth. They are so enslaved to that wealth that when their source of income is freed, they lash out, bringing pain and suffering down upon others. They cannot see the gift of freedom and health for the slave-girl; they only see the consequences for themselves. The magistrates are no freer than the owners. They are so enslaved to their rigid rules that they cannot see the inherent injustice that the slave-girl has faced for so many years. Even the jailer is not truly free. He is so caught up in his identity as a jailer that he is willing to take his life for his job. He is ready to kill himself for what he thinks is a failure on his part than to see how this job has taken over his sense of identity.[i]

So how do we avoid living like the complaining Israelites, who were physically free, but not yet spiritually free to live as the Lord our God invited them to live? How do we, in a nation that reveres freedom, avoid being enslaved by the wealth, power, and identity that comes from being free? The jailer asks the same question to Paul and Silas when he asks, “What must I do to be saved?” In the paraphrase of our text, Paul’s answer is simple: Put your entire trust in the Master Jesus. Then you’ll live as you were meant to live.[ii] Paul and Silas could have easily fled that jail when the earthquake happened. They could have sped past the jailer, and been focused solely on their own self-preservation. But we see that there is a peace in Paul and Silas that comes from true freedom – of living how we are meant to live. Instead of weeping and plotting in that cell, they sing and pray to God. Instead of running when the doors fling open, they ensure that the jailer is okay. Instead of demonizing the jailer, they offer him baptism. This is what true freedom looks like.[iii]

In our freedom, we have become enslaved – in varied and sundry ways, but we are all enslaved by something.[iv] Paul, Silas, and the slave-girl invite us into another way. They invite us to live as liberated people who trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. That true freedom may mean we find ourselves shouting out truth in a peaceful rally. That true freedom may mean that we find ourselves praising God when no one else is, sacrificing our own comfort so that someone might find theirs. That true freedom might mean trusting God is acting when we feel like God left the building long ago. When we claim that freedom, then finally, finally, we will begin living as we were meant to live. Amen.

This week I attended our Spring Clergy Day. Our presenters for the day talked to us about addictions and their impact on families and communities. As part of our work, we eventually began to talk about how we honor those in our midst who are struggling with the disease of addiction while staying true to ourselves. One specific issue at hand was how to make room for alcoholics in a Church that serves wine as the blood of Christ. Although our Bishop was pretty clear that he did not want us to step outside of the rubrics (i.e. using grape juice instead of wine/non-alcoholic wine), several clergy members shared practices they had adopted to make parishioners struggling with alcoholism feel incorporated into the community. Ultimately, what we decided was that each parish was different, and the important point was that we talked about the issue, especially soliciting the opinions of those who suffer from the disease.

Meanwhile, this Sunday is Mother’s Day. I have come to dread Mother’s Day because of the many pastoral implications (see my posts here and here). However, I am in a new parish that longs to honor those mothers and mothering-types who have made a healthy impact in their lives. I realized the dilemma of trying to honor mothers while honoring those for whom Mother’s Day is a hard day is not unlike the dilemma of trying to honor years of tradition in the Anglican Church and the pastoral sensitivities needed of a modern priest.

In both of these instances, I find myself mostly concerned about making room for both joy and compassion. How do we honor the struggle of the alcoholic while also honoring the power the taste and tradition of wine has on our spirituality? How do we honor the amazing mother we have in our lives while also honoring the fact that not everyone is so lucky? How do we celebrate the pregnancy or birth of a child in our parish while also honoring how difficult hearing about pregnancy is for someone struggling with infertility?

I am hopeful that we can do both. This Sunday, my parish is going to try to do just that. We had several parishioners who really wanted to honor the mothers in our midst. Holding on to that inner tension, we agreed that every female would be offered a flower and a poem that named the inherent challenge of honoring the amazing mothers in our lives and the ways that this day is hard for many of us. Our hope is that by doing both, we have the opportunity to give thanks and rejoice while also leaving room for grief and intercession. We know there is no perfect way to do both – but we also know that in doing nothing, we sever any opportunity for joy by simply attending to grief. Instead, we are electing to go with the both-and instead of the either-or. Prayers for all of you as you navigate the both-and of this world!

One of the things that the Search Committee, Vestry, and I all talked about during our time of discernment was church growth. Now church growth is a loaded topic because inherent in the conversation are a lot of assumptions. One assumption is that we can talk about church growth without talking about change. Many churches say they want to grow, but what they mean is that they want to find fresh meat for volunteer positions and new pledgers for the budget. But inherent in church growth are not just bodies to fill out needs: church growth means incorporating new people who will have new ideas, new dreams, and new ways of doing things. The second assumption when we talk about church growth is that we can go about church growth passively. In other words, as long as we have a good website, we have good programs, a shiny new Rector, and we are nice to people once they arrive, we will grow. While those things are important and necessary, those things do not fully address how we get people to step on our property, how we encourage people to come back after a first visit, or how we incorporate newcomers fully into the life and ministry of the church. The final, and my personal favorite, assumption is that church growth is done by the Rector. The Rector can certainly help lay the foundation of a strong system of invitation, welcome, and incorporation. But the primary way that church growth happens is through Church members inviting others to church.

All that is to say that my response to the Search Committee and Vestry went a little like this: I am more than happy to give Hickory Neck all of the infrastructure Hickory Neck needs to grow; but Hickory Neck is going to have to work, be open to change, and get real comfortable with talking about their faith in the neighborhood. Now I know many of you may be sitting here right now, cursing the Search Committee and Vestry for signing you up for some hard, scary work ahead. But let me let you in on a little secret: church growth (or evangelism, if we are feeling really sassy) is not that hard or scary. That is the great thing about the readings from the Acts of the Apostles during Eastertide: they are all about the growth of the church. Last week we heard about how Peter began to understand that God was calling him to share the Good News with the gentiles. Today, we hear about how Paul is diverted to Europe to share the Good News with the people of Macedonia.

Many of us get a little uncomfortable talking about apostles spreading the Good News because the stories about Peter and Paul seem strange and foreign. They involve dreams or visions in which God tells them what to do. They involve going to foreign lands to talk with strangers. And they sometimes involve, as we will hear next week, getting arrested and sent to jail. Most of us hear these familiar stories and assume that the stories do not really apply to us because they are historical, ancient stories. But after the drama of being diverted to a foreign land and searching for a place to join with sympathetic people, what happens to Paul in our text today is not actually all that foreign or unrelatable. The story tells us that on the Sabbath day, Paul and his companions go find where faithful people are gathered and simply start talking. The text does not say that Paul gives a presentation about the merits of converting to Christianity. The text does not say that Paul leads a worship service, with music and the holy meal. The text simply says that Paul sits down among those gathered, and starts talking. While Paul is talking, a woman in the group, Lydia, who we understand from the text is an independent woman of wealth[i], overhears what Paul is saying and is so compelled by what Paul says that she and her household are not only baptized, but insist that Paul and his companions come stay with her during their stay in Philippi.

Soon after I became a rector for the first time, I realized I had a lot to learn about church growth. I read books, poured through research, and talked with experts in the field. One of my favorite conversations about church growth was with a friend who does church consulting on growth. In her formation, she had a professor who insisted as part of her training that she needed to go out into town and just start talking to people about Jesus. She was terrified. For the first few weeks of class, my friend, now a priest, lied to her professor. Each week he would ask her how the project was going, and she would tell him that the project was going well. Finally, the professor called her bluff and insisted that she immediately go somewhere and do her assignment. So my friend went to a coffee shop, wrote on a piece of paper, “Talk to me about Jesus and I will buy you a cup of coffee,” and then set up her laptop in the hopes that no one would take her up on the offer. Much to her chagrin, a patron came up to her and said, “I’ll talk to you about Jesus, but I’ll buy the coffee.” The conversation that ensued was full of the stranger’s story – about how she used to go to church, how she still believes, how the church hurt her, but how she still misses having a church community. My friend listened to the story, honored the stranger by acknowledging how hard her journey had been, and then did the one thing that is key when talking about church growth. My friend acknowledged where she saw the presence of God in this stranger’s journey. And, for good measure, my friend told her that if she ever wanted to try church again, she knew a great place that might just work.

That is the funny thing about church growth. Church growth happens through real people having real conversations in real time. Paul sits down with a bunch of women and starts talking. My friend sat down with a stranger and listened and reflected back on the stranger’s journey. That is the same invitation that I will be giving us to do over and over again in my time here at Hickory Neck: that we start having real conversations with real people in real time. Now I know what some of you may be thinking. First, you may be thinking, “I cannot believe the Search Committee and Vestry decided to hire this priest who is going to make me do this!” Second, you may be thinking, “I have no idea how to have real conversations with real people in real time! What does she expect me to do? Start talking to strangers at the coffee shop, on the golf course, and at the Little League game?”

Before you get too anxious, I want to give you a little piece of comfort from scripture. In Peter’s story last week, in Paul’s story today, and in the texts coming up next week and at Pentecost, we learn that all of these encounters happen with the Holy Spirit going before, making a way for the encounter to happen. In today’s story, Paul has no intention of going to Macedonia. In fact, in the verses we did not read today, Paul and his crew actually had plans and made attempts to go to other places, but their plans were thwarted by the Holy Spirit. Finally, Paul has a vision that he was supposed to go to Macedonia.[ii] Once he and the group decide to follow that vision, everything becomes smooth. Their travel is not thwarted, they easily find their way to Philippi, they stumble onto a group of women who are believers, and out of nowhere, just through conversations about faith, Lydia steps up and not only desires baptism, she demands that Paul and his company accept her hospitality. That is the reality about growth: yes, growth involves putting ourselves out there to have hard conversations, and yes, growth involves being vulnerable and uncomfortable, and yes, growth will even involve change to us personally and to our community as a whole. But God shows us through the story of scripture, that the Holy Spirit is ever before us, making the way smooth. When our intentions are simply to share our story, to listen to the stories of others, and to honor the ways in which God is already active and blessing us, then the rest flows smoothly.

We are probably going to be talking about church growth a lot in the years to come. We will talk about how to grow, we will make changes that will create a strong foundation for invitation, welcome, and incorporation, and we will get out there and talk to our neighbors. But at the heart of all that work is the promise that the Holy Spirit is ever before us, making the way smooth, calming our nerves so that God can work in spite of us, and showing us how our holy conversations will be a source of blessing to us as much as those conversations are a blessing to others.[iii] We will do this work together: you, me, and the Holy Spirit. The work will be hard, scary, and beautiful. The work will be a blessing to us all and allow us to be a blessing to this community. We can do this work together, because the Holy Spirit goes before us. Amen.